Indonesian military shortens reach of aid workers in province

January 12, 2005|By Jane Perlez, New York Times News Service.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — The Indonesian military on Tuesday ordered foreign aid workers to restrict their operations to the two main cities hit by the tsunami in an effort to assert control over international relief operations in the province.

Outside Banda Aceh and neighboring Meulaboh, aid workers will need permission to go into more remote areas where hundreds of thousands of people were uprooted by the disaster, said Indonesia's military commander, Gen. Endriartono Sutarto.

"For the time being I would like the foreign presence only in Banda Aceh and Meulaboh," Endriartono said at a news conference. "Outside those areas they must be accompanied by the Indonesian military."

The United Nations estimates that about 400,000 people in Aceh province were uprooted by the tsunami and that many of those victims are being sheltered in towns and villages.

The new restrictions will enable the military to increase its presence in the countryside, where the rebels are strongest and where civilians fear Indonesian soldiers the most.

The general asserted that the new measures are needed to protect foreign aid workers from the separatist rebels that Indonesia has been fighting for 30 years. But rebels from the Free Aceh Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym, GAM, released a statement Tuesday guaranteeing "the safety and free access to all parts of Aceh for international aid workers."

So far, there have been no incidents in Aceh involving the rebels and the trucks of the UN World Food Program, said Ian Clarke, the head of the program's office here. About 40 food-laden trucks a day had wound their way up the road from the city of Medan to Banda Aceh without trouble, he said.

Aid workers have expressed concern in recent days that the Indonesian military, worried about losing control, would use the conflict as a pretext for clamping down on their work.

There was skepticism among relief groups about whether and how the new restrictions would be enforced. Many foreign aid agencies, including the World Food Program, are reluctant to work with military escorts because they fear that accepting the protection of soldiers from one side could drag them into the conflict.

Only in "very rare circumstances" does the World Food Program accept military escorts, said Bettina Luescher, spokeswoman for the program. She pointed to Darfur in Sudan, where a civil conflict rages but where the program's trucks are never accompanied by military personnel.

Before the tsunami, Aceh was virtually sealed off to foreigners. Martial law was declared in May 2003 and relaxed to a state of "civil emergency" last year, as the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 troops severely weakened the rebels. Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, and other organizations have consistently accused the Indonesian military of severe abuses of civilians.